Friday, September 25, 2009

I have just been skimming my marathon training logs and saw that amazingly I should hit 1000 miles this year right on my marathon this October 10th. I believe this Summer has been some of my best training yet in my short (1.25 years) running career. I am 2 weeks away from my second marathon ever. My goal is 3:50, but my "not-so-secret" hope is to run a 3:40.

So, the training plans I have utilized were Hal Higdon's Novice supreme and the Runner's World Smart Coach plans. I liked the RW plan because it got me used to planning the time to run frequent longish runs (mostly 7-8 miles) during the week. I believe that this will allow me to get used to higher mileage training programs as I try to improve. I haven't been doing so much speed work and I have a feeling that this must change to qualify me for Boston.

I have just gotten comfortable with running at a low 8-minute mile pace for 5-8 mile spans, but I have only run low 9-minute paces for my long runs. I feel like I did C-level work on my aerobic base building. I gave myself the C-grade because I felt very fatigued during my 20-mile run this past week, I only did one twenty miler, I quit during a 16 miler (finishing only 14 miles), and I did not train with proper fuel but for my last two long runs. I did C+ work for speed training. This grade because I actually did some speed work on the track, but I only did a 2 interval training runs and I did not enter any 5Ks or 10Ks. My strength hills and stamina work was a C. I did a few marathon pace and tempo runs, but I did not intentionally run any hills. However, my running locations tend to be very hilly on the geography side - the average elevation gain of all my outdoor runs this Summer is 1225 feet. On dedication and effort I definitely give myself an A-, because I didn't miss any workouts (though I am in danger, because I am going on an out of country business trip this Saturday and will not be able to run this Sunday) and I challenged myself to a psuedo 10K race where I clocked a time less than 45 seconds slower than my PB.

In all, I give myself a C+ training grade this season, which if scored on a curve with other rookie marathoners might eke out a B+ grade. I made it past my first marathon and trained for my second that makes me sure I am not a fly-by-night runner. I kept a fairly decent training log; annoying my Facebook friends with daily updates i'm afraid. I expect to PR in at least one race per year let's hope that I do not disappoint.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

8.01 miles - 1:03:31 - 7:55 min/mi

I didn't read my training plan today and ran 8 miles instead of 7. I also let my competitive juices get to me because I was running on a track instead the road and ran almost a minute and a half faster than my target pace. Since my tempo run on Thursday was 6 miles at a 7:57 min/mi I could swap this workout for that one.

Friday, September 4, 2009

I ran a rare after work run today. It was hot relative to my regular early morning runs. I looked up a 7 miler from about a month ago to run. I forgot how hilly it was. An old Dougie Fresh song made me smile while climbing one of the hills.